How To Befriend a Baby Dragon

Chapters

Chapter 1: To Talk To The Animals
Chapter 2: A Dragon Among Ponies
Chapter 3: Making New Friends

Chapter 1: To Talk To The Animals

One of the decidely-stranger benefits of becoming a world-saving heroine, which Fluttershy supposed some assumed she now was -- although she didn't feel that she was anypony really different, after that long strange dream-like ordeal in the Everfree -- was that she got to talk to a baby Dragon. This was not something she would have imagined possible -- nor something she would have imagined that she would have wanted -- just a short month ago. But it was something that she very much valued, now that it had become part of her life.

Fluttershy knew that she was a very strange Pegasus -- one who didn't measure up very well to the model of a Pegasus mare, very much unlike her best friend and frequent protector Rainbow Dash, who was in pretty much everything the model of a Pegasus of either sex. Pegasi were supposed to be brave, forthright, high-flying warriors; Fluttershy was cowadly and sneaky and much preferred the depths of the forest, safely concealed under the canopy of leafy cover to the terrifyingly-open blue expanses of the sky.

As for being a warrior, Fluttershy hated violence; something about even a hoof-fight nauseated her, even when she wasn't one of the combatants. Fights meant hatred, and Hate repulsed her: she much preferred being around Love.

Which sounded like a decent Equestian attitude, an appeciation of the Harmony -- if expressed somewhat pacifistically for a Pegasus. In the heroic sagas of the Time of Thrones that she and Rainbow Dash had loved to share when they had been fillies, a Pegasus warrior often appreciated the Harmony by declaiming a poem regarding the beauty of life, before flying off to war, bathing her wingblades in the blood of the foe, and falling in glorious battle. In these peaceful modern days, Pegasi were more apt to brawl or compete in dangerous aerobatic sports, but the same fundamental heroic principles applied.

Except that it was no such thing, in Fluttershy's case. She was frightened of violence because she did not want to get hurt; she was repulsed by hate and attracted by love because she could taste and feed on Love, and the reason she could do that had everything to do with the secret and shameful circumstances of her siring, and the shocking claims made to her by a creature that lived in the Wastes, far to the southwest, a female monster that called herself 'Chrysalis.' If what she said was true, Fluttershy wasn't even fully a Pegasus at all, but a scion of the black buzzing monsters that dwelt in a tunnel-riddled mesa, near a hill crowned by menhirs older than this whole Age of the World.

Which went a long way toward explaning why Fluttershy was such a failure as a Pegasus.

She knew she should change, and sometimes she felt that she should die; but she found change to be difficult, and she was too much of a coward to take her own life. And there was something buried deep in her that stubbornly wanted to live, and refused to change to meet the standards of others. Something that said "I am Fluttershy. And I am free."

So she was herself, and lived -- a strange misfit in life, but herself was all that she was, or really wanted to be.

In all her life, there was one thing of which she could be truly proud, and that was her Talent with animals.

She had first discovered this Talent when she was falling to her death from Flight Camp, when she was only ten years old. Which was an abnormal circumstance for a ten-year-old Pegasus to find herself in, let alone one in which she might discover her Talent and win her Cutie Mark. But then, Fluttershy was in many ways a very abnormal Pegasus.

The first odd thing about her situation was that she'd been falling in the first place. She hadn't actually been injured or unconscious or anything of the sort, just accidentally knocked off a cloud by Rainbow Dash and two rather mean colts Dash had challenged to a race -- ironically-enough, in defense of Fluttershy's own honor. The two colts had been making fun of Fluttershy, and Rainbow Dash had noticed and intervened; Dashie had done things like that rather a lot during their early years together, because Fluttershy had been even shyer and weaker then than she was now, and Rainbow Dash had made it her own business to protect her.

Hurting Fluttershy, of course, was quite the opposite of what Rainbow Dash had meant to do; but it is unlikely that the eight-year-old Rainbow Dash had even suspected at that moment that Fluttershy was in any particular danger. Pegasi, after all, can fly -- and while Fluttershy was a weak flyer, she was no cripple. She could fly, and most of the time, she would have simply fluttered back onto the cloud on which she had been standing, or some other cloud nearby.

Most of the time.

One of Fluttershy's many weaknesses -- one of the reasons she was such a laughably-defective excuse for a Pegasus, as her Uncle Windvane used to frequently put it -- was that sometimes, when under too much emotional stress, she would panic, and her wings would lock up, freeze in place, often folded against her side. Or move in the wrong way, as if she were trying to buzz them like a bee or flutter them like a butterfly, instead of delivering either the broad firm motion a Pegasus employed to hover, or the stronger, faster power stroke used in forward flight. And, a lot of the time, when this would happen she would panic even more, and then her flight-field -- the thaumomagnetic levitation, shaped lifting body and defensive force field that a Pegasus projected through her wings and flight feathers -- would just shut down.

Which meant, when that happened, that she couldn't fly. Or even hover in place. She could only fall, like any lesser sort of being. And, when she hit the ground, she would have no flight field to cushion the impact.

She would, simply, die.

She was aware of this even at ten, which was why she had cried out as she plummeted. No, to be truthful to herself, she had shrieked and screamed and bawled like a small foal, fluttering her wings uselessly, upside down, too terrified to even right herself in midair, even though tumbling into a horizontal or vertical orientation was one of the first and simplest aerobatic techniques taught to every child. And she began the long fall of more than a mile straight down toward -- as she would later learn -- the northwestern Everfree Forest, southeastern White Tail Woods, Ponyville and Ghastly Gorge, the vagaries of the wind controlling her descent more than could the terrified Pegasus filly herself.

Many Ponies who did not understand Pegasi would have been shocked that none of the colts and fillies who had assembled to watch the race bothered to dive after her. But the truth was that they didn't realize that she was in any serious danger, any more than had Rainbow Dash or the two colts she was racing. The sky was the natural home of a Pegasus, and the very fact that Fluttershy was making noises and moving her wings told them that she was neither unconscious nor crippled; they wanted to watch the race, not break away to play with some silly filly who was just being a drama queen.

The camp counselors might have done something different. But they weren't on the scene, a dereliction of duty which was to have some serious personal consequences for some of them. And the children gathered there were just children, content to let adults take the initiative in all really-important decisions.

So it was that nopony noticed any need to intervene, and thus nopony intervened, and therefore the young Fluttershy fell through the thickening air toward her destruction. Though she couldn't actually see her fast-approaching doom, as she was falling upside down, and her attention was riveted on the mockingly-comforting clouds of Summer Flight Camp, rapidly-receding as the merciless force of gravity dashed her downward.

Her wings worked randomly, emitting nothing like a coherent flightfield. Her legs thrashed about, her hooves reaching for puchase on a nonexistent surface. Her screams were almost constant, with pauses only to draw breath to resume screaming.

She was making other sorts of distress calls as well, but she was not -- at the time -- aware of this.

She was more than half the way down when -- in her frantic flailing -- she became fully-aware of the existence of the ground, toward which she was falling and which therefore constituted the principal threat to her life. It was in a position where she could not see it without extending her neck toward it, which was at least marginally more terrifying than the general horror of her position.

This fear impelled her to action, and without even really thinking about it, she performed an inside inverted half-loop, rolling to put her hooves under her.

Immediately, Fluttershy's situation seemed slightly less terrifying. She was still falling at terminal velocity, yes, but now she was falling hooves downward, in something like a normal level-flight attitude. And though she was a poor flyer, she was still a flyer, with a flyer's fundamental instincts and experience.

So, Fluttershy began to recover her wits. She started trying to bring up her flightfield.

It still wasn't working. So she continued falling, and flailing and screaming as she fell.

But she was now sufficiently rational to notice something strange.

Her flightfield was now actually on. It simply didn't seem to be functioning as a lifting body or generating any levitation or thrust. Instead, it had assumed some strange four-lobed shape, and was emitting something in rhythm to her distress calls. And she could feel a return from something -- something emanating from on or near the ground, especially in the greener patches. A lot of somethings. They were alive -- and beautiful!

Their loveliness was almost overwhelming, to the point that Fluttershy almost forgot that she was still plummeting to her doom. She felt as if she was becoming part of something wonderful. It was too bad, though, that unless she managed to slow her descent, and soon, she wouldn't be enjoying this feeling for very much longer.

A moment later, she caught sight of the pastel-pink cloud below.

The first thing she noticed about it, of course, was its unusual color. As a Pegasus she was, of course, very familiar with clouds and their types and natures, and pink clouds were hardly unknown -- but usually at sunrise or sunset, and right now it was neither. As a falling Pegasus, any cloud beneath her was of interest to her as a potential platform against which she might slow or even stop her fall.

The second thing she noticed was that the cloud was moving -- specifically, it was rising on a course which seemed calculated to intercept her own fall. This was welcome information, and the obvious reason for it would be that one or more Pegasi, noticing her plight, were pushing the cloud over to try to catch her. Though it was a bit curious that she couldn't see any Pegasi down there. Were they pushing the cloud from underneath?

The important point, though, was this. She was saved!'

With the joy of that thought, her fear lifted, and then she noticed a third thing.

The pink cloud was alive.

Or rather, she realized with the strange new lifesense she seemed to be channeling through her malfunctioning flightfield, the cloud was cmposed of a myriad little lives, each of them a creature considerably smaller than any one of her hooves. As they approached, she could feel their many, tiny little minds -- each extremely simple, but all motivated, oddly enough, by the desire to help her.

As she and the cloud of what (she learned later) were pink cabbage butterflies (pieras rapae rosea, to use the Old Amareican scientific terminology) met, her formerly-frozen flightfield extended to link with the cloud, so that each butterfly bore a miniscule fraction of her weight. a burden that even its little wings could carry with relative ease. She slowed almost to a stop in midair, and then was borne slowly down on a living magic carpet of cabbage butterflies.

The butterflies lowered her gently down into a land of magic.

As she was to later discover, it wasn't literally a land of magic, save in the sense that all Equestria was such in general. It was the southeastern White Tail Woods, just southwest of Ponyville and across the Avalon from the Everfree Forest -- a bit farther into the woods than the parkland west of Ponyville. It was a fairly normal forest, which is to say that it was full of life, and all that life exploded into the view of the shiny new senses of the filly Fluttershy.

Young Pegasi in general, if they are raised in a cloud-city such as Cloudsdale, do not venture often to the ground. This is a cultural legacy left behind from more violent times, when safety lay in the clouds, patrolled by the forces of the city-state; on the ground awaited foes, monsters and slavers. The ground was a place of peril for young Pegasi.

Of course, those anarchic times ended many centuries ago. Few modern Pegasi feared the ground so much as to never let their children play down there.

One who did was Sweetwing Wind, Fluttershy's mother. She was both very fearful, and in her own eccentric way very traditional. And her Uncle Windvane despised Fluttershy too much to want to take her with his family on their terrestrial excursions.

Thus, unusually for even a Cloudsdale Pegasus, Fluttershy had never set her hooves on the ground before.

Now she was, standing in a beautiful forest glade, hooves planted firmly on the warm grass, her frogs feeling the soft earth beneath. surrounded by verdant woods on all sides. Even an ordinary Pegasus, unfamiliar with a forest, would have found the numerous novel sights, smells and sounds surrounding her to be extremely enchanting.

For Fluttershy, who had just discovered that she could deploy her flightfield -- still in that curious, four-lobed configuration -- to directly sense the life all around her, her new environment was utterly-overwhelming. She stood entranced, eyes wide open, ears aquiver, and mouth widening in full-flehmen as she attempted to drink in every last detail of her surroundings. And her wings were flared full out, and fluttering slowly in time with the pulsations of energy emitted by her strange, four-lobed flightfield.

The joy of the glade flowed through her, and she burst into full heartsong, serenading the forest and the life all around her in a spontaneous expression of her love for everything in this wonderful new world. She broadcast her love, and the forest returned it, filling her with energy and happiness.

She rose again, this time under her own power, working her wings to flit around the forest and look at all the new wonders around her. Now her flightfield was working well, though still not normally for a Pegasus: her feathery, avian wings were the wrong-shape to efficiently generate the four-lobed field necessary for her lifesense.

She strained a bit, wanting to change her wing posture in some impossible way, but she could not. So she accepted the shape that she was, without attempting something of which nopony was capable. She was not even sure why, momentarily, she had imagined her form malleable. She was after all a Pony, nothing less and nothing more.

But it was good enough for slow flight close to the ground; what was more, in this new configuration she was very agile, able to easily maneuver around the many obstacles of the woods. It was as if her flightfield had always been meant to function in this sort of environment, rather than the thin and windy world of the upper skies.

So she explored, happily singing, seeing all the creatures around her. She had seen birds before, but only the high flyers that made it up as far as Cloudsdale, not the many low-dwelling passerines that flitted between the trees. The other creatures she beheld that day -- rabbits, squirrels, and other small furred beasts -- she knew not the names of in Equestrian, but somehow she knew what they were when she saw them, and she serenaded them with their True Names, and they frisked about her fearlessly.

They were all drawn to her -- they followed her -- in a great swarm that acknowledged her their mistress, their Queen, and adored her. They seemed to desire some sort of leadership or direction from her, and she did not know any better than to simply bound and flit and fly about slowly enough to permit them to follow. As their numbers swelled, so did the Love they felt for her, and she eagerly drank it in, feeling happier and stronger than she ever had felt before.

This is my place! she thought in ecstasy. This is where I am meant to be, what I am meant to do, who I really am! She realized that in a way Uncle Windvane was right -- she was not a normal Pegasus; instead, she was something else, something which was meant not for the high skies and the upper airs, but rather for the forests and the creatures within them, though she had neither concept nor name for that kind of Pony. She only knew that she was herself -- and here, she felt free.

Suddenly, her reverie was shattered by a bright polychromatic flash of light, as if a rainbow had somehow exploded, from somewhere far above to the Northwest, from roughly the direction of Flight Camp. It was an immense wash of red light expanding from a brilliant yellow-white core, with tinges of blue and green in between, followed rather swiftly by an immense basso vibration. Raised a true Pegasus, despite her oddities, Fluttershy automatically timed the interval betwen flash and roar, as if she had been ranging a thunderstorm by the intervaal between lightning-bolt and thunder-clap. And she reached the correct conclusion: That came from the race!

She might reasonably have been worried regarding the fate of Rainbow Dash, but she was immediately distracted by the reactions of the animals around her to this tremendous explosion. The birds shot away, making for the trees; the various furry quadrupeds scampered for cover; some very strange green and brown furless creatures, which she learned later were frogs, dived for safety in the nearby lake.

She could feel their fear, and she realized something. They were far from mindless, but they were far less intelligent than herself. She could judge the intensity of the light and the loudness of the explosion, and conclude that it posed her no peril. But they could not -- all they knew was that it was big and scary and perhaps it would come after them and harm them.

They're scared, she thought to herself. Someone should comfort them. And then, with a shock, she thought: I should comfort them.

For the first time in her life, Fluttershy wasn't the one who was the most afraid. For the first time, she would be able to give, rather than need, comfort from fear.

For the first time in her life, Fluttershy could be useful.

She saw a group of long-eared furry creatures -- rabbits, she would later learn -- run past her hooves, making for the bushes. Resolve filled her heart. She softly stepped over to the bushes and peered under their lush foliage.

Small, terrified brown and black eyes stared apprehensively into her own.

Something clicked into place within her mind. It was a part of her that she had never known was there before, never used before, never even known was possible before. But it was there, and she used it. Flawlessly, the very first time.

"Shhh ..." she said to the furry creatures, sensing the shape of the fear in their minds, and automatically, effortlessly moderating her tone and expression and body language. I'm a friend. We're in no danger, she said in some strange way without speaking, picking up on their reactions as she did so, refining her responses via what she would later understand was a feedback loop. "It's okay." The danger has passed. It's safe to come out now, she communicated by a dozen subtle signs.

She knocked on a hollow tree, very precisely, in a pattern that seemed right, and several small, bushy-tailed furry things knew no fear of the huge equid who had intruded herself into their world, and instead of hiding even more deeply within their refuge poked their heads out to listen to her, as if she had been a dominant member of their own species. "You can come out," she told them. And they did as she suggested.

"Everything's okay," she said to the slimy green and brown long-legged hoppers in the water, speaking in some wise that was no longer even remotely Equestrian, Pony or mammalian; not even using her normal vocal organs at all. From this day on, she would have the power to communicate with all tetrapods and -- with greater difficulty -- with some even more alien life-forms. Frogs, she would later understand, were not cladistically all that far from mammals.

Then, fearlessly exercising her wings, for at this moment she was no longer Fluttershy the Coward, but rather Fluttershy, the Protector of the Animals, she took to the skies, and gathered the frightened birds around her. "There's nothing to be afraid of," she told them, and they understood and believed her.

They twittered, and to her happy surprise, Fluttershy realized that she could understand them as well. She had heard birdsong before, and loved it, and now she coul grasp its meanings. These meanings were not overly complex: birds were not Ponies. But it was there.

Safe, the birds said. Pony is friend. Pony is fun. Look at Pony. Follow Pony.

And so they did, and as Fluttershy descended to the ground, she found herself the center of attention, not only of birds but also of numerous kinds of beasts, none of which she then recognized. And all were speaking to her. All named her 'friend.'

For the very first time in her life, Fluttershy was popular.

Author's Note

This Fluttershy is a lot less happy than the one we see now. This is because this is Early Season One Fluttershy. This is the Fluttershy who is afraid to even speak her name to a stranger, who very obviously feels that she cannot even claim equality with other Ponies.

Yes, she's been on the Quest of the Elements. But that was just a couple of weeks ago. She has barely begun her climb to self-confidence.

Pieras rabae (the cabbage butterfly) is real. Pieras rabae rosea, the pink cabbage butterfly, is as far as I know purely fictional.

Fluttershy doesn't think of the obvious analogy between her problems and Scootaloo's because she doesn't yet know Scootaloo, save as "that orange and purple Pegasus filly who hangs out with Sweetie Belle." She does know Sweetie, as the little sister of her own good friend Rarity.

Oh, and this being the Shadow Wars Story Verse, she's half-Changeling. And doesn't even really understand yet what Changelings are. All she knows is that she's partly some kind of monster.

Of course, Fluttershy's wing-locking problem is in part because she is sometimes calling upon Changeling or Old Flutterpony, rather than Pegasus, flight reflexes. This shouldn't be possible, because she has been in Pegasus form from birth on and her nerve net has grown to serve that form. But it's made worse by the fact that she's unknowingly sometimes tuning in to Changeling telepathic transmissions, and when that happens she sometimes subconsciously attempts to micro-Shift -- in midair, and without having the slightest idea what she's doing.

The day will come when the ability to Micro-Shift between three different flight systems, in midair, will make her a very deadly combatant. But this will come long after she attains adulthood. Right now, all it does is messes her up, badly.

I've had water survival training, and the nice thing about being in water is that humans are buoyant. In calm water it's very hard to drown if you even remotely keep your head. I imagine that Pegasus children get "flight survival training," with the added bonus that Pegasi can breathe the air just fine at most altitudes to which they can fly.

There of course is a "concept" and "name" for that Kind of Pony.

("Dawn," by Tears of Thunder)

Fluttershy just hasn't yet learned the truth.

Chapter 2: A Dragon Among Ponies

His earliest memories were of a very small, warm and wet place.

Had he been a mammal, this would have been his mother's womb, and he would never have remembered it. Prenatal mammalian minds are not that well-formed: they have sensation and identity, but only short-term memories.

But he was not a mammal. He was an archosaur. Specifically, he was a Dragon.

And, while his literally-embryonic memories were confused and limited, they were present. There was a big warm comforting female presence that occasionally spoke to him, in a language he did not yet understand, but whose intonations meant to him love. Then there were sharp frightening sounds and voices raised in anger and fear.

Then nothing.

And then ... a series of separate impressions. Energies pouring into him, another kind of voices speaking another language, which he later knew to be Equestrian. A whole different set of voices speaking, but in a tongue that changed but slowly from voice to voice. Much, much later he knew what had happened, that these were mages, many different sets of mages across many generations, trying and failing to hatch his egg. Each time they failed, he returned to the nothing.

Then, another voice, another presence, a pattern of magic sensed. That pattern reached out, responded, matched with his own. Energy surged into his accumulators, tiny and weak though they were at this stage in his development. The energy and the pressure built up irresisitibly, and he had to stretch.

He stretched, and burst out of his eggshell. Instead of tumbling out of the egg, he instead found himself floating in midair, caught in the gentle telekinetic grip of the same energy which had just helped him hatch.

As was the nature of his kind, he emerged facing the source of the energy-boost that was helping him hatch. He gazed wonderingly, and lovingly, into the face of his hatcher. Some things did not match his instincts -- she was too small, and too soft, all lavender coat and indigo hair and purple eyes. He of course did not yet have the terms, but she was no archosaur. She was, rather, a mammal. Specifically, a Unicorn filly.

But those purple eyes looked joyously into his own, and in them he sensed love and caring, and a program evolved deep into his own mind, one which predated sapience or even great intelligence among archosaurs, engaged. Imprinting, would have been what it would have reported if it had worked in verbal terms. Mother.

It would be a long time before he understood this, because he was as yet a new and ignorant creature, and he was for years to be confused by the fact that, in the society into which he was now born, the relationship of Twilight Sparkle to him would be not "mother," but rather "adoptive elder sister." The role of "mother" in terms of raising him would be split between Princess Celestia Sola Invicta, who was his first guardian; and Twilight Velvet, the mother of Twilight Sparkle, who would mostly take care of him after Celestia was forced to return to her national obligations.

He of course knew nothing of this yet. All he knew was that he finally had some room to move around in. He yawned, and stretched ...

... and then something terrifying then happened. Twilight Sparkle shrieked, her eyes glowed white, and she levitated, as an immense surge of magical energy flowed through her into Spike. Wild magic sprayed everywhere, and suddenly the rather large chamber in which he, she and several other Ponies had been shrank until it was smaller than Spike's original egg.

For the second time that minute, Spike hatched; his head now poking through the roof of the chamber. He blinked in confusion, seeing the city of Canterlot, and the Mountain and Vale of Avalon spread out below him. Somewhere in the sky, he saw a beautiful rainbow-hued explosion. He gazed at it, fascinated by a particular dark-purple band in the play of colors ...

It was a lot to take in for a highly-intelligent, but woefully-ignorant young archosaur whose entire visual world had, up until now, consisted of an egg. The world certainly was big, and interesting!

He was not sure what to do next. One set of instincts told him to work himself clear of the egg -- but he'd already done that, and he wasn't sure whether the chamber had shrunk or he'd grown, and it might be bad for him to start thrashing around if the latter was the case, another set of instincts told him.

The Ponies in that chamber, and in Canterlot, were quite fortunate that he came of a kind which actually had instincts regarding what to do if they grew instantly to greater size. Another sort of creature, or one which hadn't just imprinted on a Pony, might have done Canterlot considerable damage in its newborn puzzlement.

Then there was another powerful magical presence by his side, and an energy touching him and reaching into the link between himself and Mother. For a moment he was frightened, but the energy felt very warm, female and friendly. Trust me, it said. I'm here to help.

And Spike, who was in his mind but a newborn Dragon, trusted her. The energy did something, and the structure in which he was standing once again expanded -- or he himself shrank, he was fairly sure now that it was the latter -- and he was sitting amidst the remnants of the egg and the nest in which it had been sitting, contemplating the one he thought of as Mother, Twilight Sparkle, who was being regarded by a much bigger white, horned and winged creature of a kind similar to herself. This other Pony had a very strange mane and tail, a pastel rainbow which billowed as if blown by an ethereal wind.

And that was his first visual impression of Princess Celestia, who was to become very important in his life.

He needed something comforting after all these shocks. He twitched muscles and a spade-tipped tail appeared before his field of view. It was his own tail. He sucked on it, and immediately felt somewhat better.

"Twilight Sparkle," said Princess Celestia. Her voice was kind, but there was a tone in it that demanded attention. Spike of course did not yet know this, but she had been practicing tones like this for some two millennia.

"I'm very sorry!" squeaked Twilight Sparkle. "I didn't mean ..."

"You have a very special gift," said Princess Celestia. "I don't think I've ever come across a unicorn with your raw abilities."

"Huh?" said Twilight Sparkle, surprised by this.

"But you need to learn to tame these abilities, through focused study."

"Huh??" Twilight Sparkle was clearly confused.

"Twilight Sparkle, I'd like to make you my own personal protégé here at the school."

"Huh?!" Twilight Sparkle was even more confused. She looked at two adult Ponies -- a mare and a stallion, Twilight Velvet and Night Light, Spike would later learn, her parents and the ones destined to be his own adoptive parents. -- seeking guidance.

The two nodded vigorously, whinnying with the intensity of their excitement.

"Yes!" cried Twilight Sparkle happily, leaping in sheer exuberation.

"One other thing ..." said Celestia.

"More?" asked Twilight Sparkle.

Celestia waved a hoof wordlessly at Twilight's rump.

Twilight's gaze followed the motion. Her eyes widened when she saw the stars that adorned it.

"My Cutie Mark!" she exclaimed in delight. "Yes!" she cried, leaping to her feet. "Yes-yes-yes-yes-yes!!!" hopping and frisking all around Celestia, who smiled indulgently at her.

And that was how Spike was hatched.

Much of his life was spent in the Royal Palace at Canterlot: that great rambling complex from which the supernally-beautiful and almost-unbelievably wise Princess Celestia ruled most of the North Amareican continent. Most of that Palace was of metal-reinforced solid stone, faced in white marble and accented in gold; an architectural masterpiece of greater volume than most towns, and immensely valuable.

The main building -- the Palace Capitol -- was huge and extremely strong. While its wide windows prevented it from being a true fortress, its sturdy though soaring walls were both designed and enchanted with considerable resistance to any but the heaviest of siege artillery. Here was the center of the government; the head offices of the major Ministries, and the residential quarters of Princess Celestia herself, in the higher chambers of the Solar Wing.

Here, too, lived the hatchling in the first months of his life outside the egg.

There, he was tended to by none other than Princess Celestia.

Spike was never, in all his immensely-long life, entirely certain why Celestia had chosen to assume this burden herself. Later -- very much later -- he was to learn of an earlier Spike the Dragon, one who had been taken in by the immortal Mares of Paradise Estate, long millennia before one of their number had given birth to Celestia and Luna, itself long millennia before the present day.

That Spike had performed signal service to the Mares of Paradise Estate, and in the process played a role in saving all Ponykind from the Time of Extermination. This Celestia had never forgotten, and when she had found herself positioned to do good for a Dragon descended from that earlier Spike, had seized the opportunity.

But she did not have to take on the tasks of new-hatched child care herself. She could have delegated them to many others among her numerous servants. Instead, she chose to perform these services -- even of the most humble and personal nature -- herself.

Admittedly, another reason may have been to spare her servants the difficulty and indeed danger of tending to a Dragon hatchling. For while Spike in his first few months was far from the massive, armored, firebreathing monster he was to eventually become: while his scales then were tender and his smokes cool by the standards even of Dragon babies; still, he was a Dragon.

Celestia had faced unafraid on the field of battle full-grown adult Dragons, singly and in groups, and vanquished them. She was an Alicorn Major: herself strong, powered by the same fires that nourished suns, shielded by interlocking spells woven into her very anatomy, and capable of regenerating almost any harm that did not slay her outright. There was no irreperable harm that little Spike might wreak upon her, no matter with what simple-minded infant energy he gnashed his baby jaws or squeezed his tiny claws or vomited flame from his barely-functional pyrogastrum.

The same would not have been true as regarded mere normal Ponies. And Celestia was known to geniunely care for the fates of her servants.

So it was that the business of administering a vast Realm were delayed or delegated to subordinates, while the immortal Avatar of a Cosmic Concept tended to one new-hatched Dragon.

At the time, of course, Spike thought nothing of it. He demanded attention with the shameless selfishness of any infant being. He cried out for food and drink (though neither milk nor pap, as he was no mammal, and even his weak newborn jaws were quite capable of crunching through solid bone, which was indeed part of the problem); he was given such sustenance. He wanted to be burped and changed after his meals, and so it was done. He wanted to be hugged and kissed and cuddled and fondly murmurred to by his mother, and the Ruling Princess Celestia Sola Invicta assumed this office, just as if she had not not borne upon her shapely white withers the dignified burden of sovereignity over a large portion of the Earth and leadership of a great nation of Ponies.

It was more than most monarchs would have done, but then Princess Celestia was more than most monarchs: more, indeed, than even her subjects would imagine until that dark day, then still three and a half decades in the future, when the heavens would tear asunder and darkness spill through to threaten all Earthlife. Then, the world would be glad that Princess Celestia was even more than she seemed.

But that day was not yet. Besides, Celestia had always loved little children.

So passed the first few months of Spike's life.

The time came when Celestia reluctantly surrendered her charge to Twilight Sparkle.

He was not, of course, unused to her. Apart from his initial imprinting, Twilight Sparkle had regularly come to visit and check on him. Celestia encouraged her to do this, because she had always meant her student to take care of him. She needed very little pressure to do this, because Twilight found the hatchling utterly fascinating.

When Celestia told Twilight that she wanted to make Spike her student's charge, the young Unicorn was of course at first utterly overwhelmed by this. Twilight Sparkle was in no way ready for such a responsibility. She was at the time but eight years old -- herself still a young filly; far too young by normal standards to care for a younger Pony sibling, let alone a hatchling Dragon.

She did have several things going for her, though. First, she was a Light: scion of an old Canterlot clan with a history of courage and determination. Lights did not readily give up; especially not on a charge of honor. Second, she was Twilight Sparkle: one of the smartest Ponies of her generation. Even as a filly, she could solve problems that might stymie lesser mortals.

Third, and perhaps most importantly, Spike was a baby Dragon. Product of an evolution in some ways harsher than that which had produced the Ponies; physically far tougher than any non-Alicorn; he was by no means as like to come to harm as a Pony foal. Even as a hatchling, there was metal reinforcing both scales and bones. Twilight Sparkle would have had to make an egregious error indeed in order for it to prove literally fatal.

Finally, in regard to the important issue of his rearing, the young Unicorn filly had the very great advantage of having been raised by the redoubtable Twilight Velvet and her husband Night Light, two highly competent parents. Twilight Sparkle of course shaped her care for Spike on their excellent example: and, if that were not enough, on her holidays, the student took Spike home with her, where those two worthies themselves helped care for him.

So it was that the young Dragon received an excellent upbringing, by Pony standards. By Dragon standards, of course, he was treated far more lovingly than was the draconic norm.

It is not, of course, that Dragons do not love their get. They are highly-intelligent, slow-breeding creatures who but infrequently lay very small clutches of eggs, and whose offspring require several decades to reach adulthood. In consequence, they employ a K-selected reproductive strategy, just as do Ponies, and often love their children very much, with a fierce possessiveness alien to most Ponykind.

However, Dragons are huge apex predators, who contend for dominance with a frank ferocity also alien to most Ponykind. Dragon parents would do their children no favors by softly coddling them. Instead, their love would seem harsh to Pony parents: they do this to fit their young for the sometimes necessarily-violent life that awaits them; both the rough-and-tumble play of Dragon children, and the more serious fighting they may have to do in adulthood.

Spike was, by Dragon standards, a very spoiled child.

Yet it was not as bad as it might have been.

For while it was and is true that Pony children are, especially compared to Dragons, quite tenderly reared, it is also true that some Pony clans had heroic traditions. These included the Winds, the Kickers, the Apples, the Pies, the Runes, the Moons, the Nights -- and the Lights.

Twilight Sparkle was a Light by both parental lineages, and a Night by her paternal one. Her family had long served the Realm, as administrators, scholars, mages -- and soldiers. This had been true since the shadowy centuries when it was said that Two Sisters had helped establish the Realm: there was a family legend that they were in some way specially connected to the younger of those Two Sisters, the Moon Princess, the High Lady of War.

In more historical times of darkness they had fought hard to preserve the Realm, giving unstintingly of themselves to serve Celestia. And this tradition of brave and unselfish service was kept ever green even to the present day. Many Lights had died; many had won high honors: a Light neither shirked the burden nor feared the danger; a Light but rarely counted the cost. They were respected among the other gentry, and had paid for that respect in their own blood. This was both their duty, and their pride.

And in their service to the Realm, the Lights showed a fierce perseverance, verging on outright belligerence, that was perhaps not so alien to the nobler ideals of Dragons.

Thus it was almost inevitable that little Spike, growing up as he did immersed in the traditions of the Lights, and in the near-constant company and under the tutelage of perhaps the finest filly ever to be born of that stock, would adopt these ideals for his own. In doing so, Spike absorbed the most admirable aspects of Canterlot upper-class Unicorn culture. He utterly-internalized the Light code of honor, making it his own, and bound up his own self-esteem in behaving according to that ethos -- which included considerable self-control.

Well it was for both Spike and the Ponies around him that this was the case. For, even as a young child, Spike was stronger, pound for pound, than any Earth Pony; clad in metallic scales atop an almost indestructible skeleton; with teeth and claws able to rend solid stone, and the ability to spout out plasma fire.

Had Spike not decided from an early age to be an honorable Light, he might have instead become a monster.

Author's Note

Archosaurs - These are in clade Reptilia, but taxonomically of a different Class, generally considered a higher grade. They in real life include Crocodilia, Pterosauria Dinosauria, and Aves; for the purposes of my fantasy fiction I postulate that Draconia are also archosaurs.

Archosaurs are generally distinguished from reptiles in having more efficient hearts, often more endothermic metabolisms, usually more upright postures, and almost universally higher intellects. These traits are linked: better hearts support endothermic metabolisms, which generate greater energy allowing more upright postures and feeding the big and highly-efficient archosaur brains.

Spike dimly remembers his biological mother, from within her egg. From the evidence, something bad happened to her nest. He has nho idea how long this was, as he spent quite some time in stasis.

Accumulators ...

The proto-Dragons were very heavily modified by the Serpent Folk, as far back as the Late Permian. Over hundreds of millions of years, they were redesigned as living fighting machines, with nuclear fission capabilities added to their metabolism enabling them to make themselves independent of atmosphere, the incorporation of structural metals into skeletons and scales to toughen them, and the ability to naturally project destructive effects from their mouths, and sometimes from other parts.

Most Dragons are utterly-ignorant of this ancient history, and assumed that they got this tough through natural evolution.

Chapter 3: Making New Friends

Had Fluttershy's life been one of the Old Pegasus sagas, that moment of perfect joy and understanding at age eight, when she first beheld the diversely riotous loveliness of surface-dwelling Nature, and realized that she could understand and talk to all animals, would have been the full dramatic climax of her childhood. This would have been the moment when the heroine unlocked her special talents, and might thus begin the series of preparations and trials against increasingly that would culminate in her Heroic Quest to enter some cursed realm and overcome some fell monster, resulting in her returning with some great gift of victory that would help her kinsponies forever, the great Deed which would have been the reason for the writing of the saga.

Some of it was already set up. The heroine usually had a best friend, who was sometimes also her lover, regardless of gender (Old Pegasus culture was remarkably tolerant of divergent sexualities, especially in its protagonists and their friends). At ten years of age, Fluttershy of course had no lovers of either gender, nor much desire for romantic attachments (though she was old enough to be more than a little creeped out at the way in which Cloud Kicker eyed her), but she did have a best friend. One whom, as she grew older, she sometimes found herself regarding in an increasingly warm, and eventually more than merely friendly, light.

This was, of course, Rainbow Dash.

Dashie was two years her junior, but her courage and competence meant that it was almost always Dash defending Fluttershy, rather than the other way round. That was simply in the nature of Rainbow Dash -- to protect the weak and innocent against harm. Even as a filly, Dashie had the heart of a hero, which was something Fluttershy had recognized from the moment she met her: recognized and admired.

Fluttershy had always hoped to find a hero. One of the good things about her insane mother, Sweetwing Wind, was Sweetwing's love of ancient lore and legendry. This was not so good when Sweetwing was ranting about Buzzies and Dragons about to attack them, but it did mean that Fluttershy grew up absorbing all sorts of old sagas and wonder-tales, and had access to many books about the heroic past of the Pegasi.

Rainbow Dash did not like to read -- even in the first flush of her admiration for her polychromatic-maned best friend, Fluttershy was aware of Dashie's intellectual limitations -- but she did not at all mind letting Fluttershy reading to her, especially if it was a tale of exciting adventure. Often, Fluttershy would borrow one of the less rare books from Sweetwing's library, or take one of her own books of wonder-tales, and spend the day curled up with her on a private cloud or in some secluded forest glen, recounting to Rainbow the ancient myths and legends.

Rainbow Dash seemed to love those times together, when Fluttershy read to her. Sometimes Dashie just cuddled into her and listened, and at those times Fluttershy simply enjoyed the primal happiness of Dashie's friendly warmth and familiar smell, and dear heartbeat nestled against her own. And even before Fluttershy knew what she was doing, she was sensing Dashie's love and friendship, the radiance of her shining soul, and sustaining herself in some way she could not yet comprehend from the presence of that spiritual fire.

Sometimes, though, the stories would inspire Rainbow Dash to question and comment, and they would have the most wonderful discussions about the heroes and the villains and other characters; about what they would do were they in the situations from the stories. These were almost always tremendous fun, because it let them fantasize that they were epic heroes.

Dashie, of course, always favored the more direct and violent strategies. For instance, when Fluttershy read her from the Feats of Flash Magnus, and got to one of his fights against Dragons -- despite the fact that Fluttershy described the huge archosaurs with delicious and mostly-unfeigned horror, Dashie jumped up and launched into an elaborate boast about how she would have flown right up to their gigantic leader and "kicked him right in the snoot, pow!"

Fluttershy giggled in delight and clapped her forehooves as Rainbow Dash proceeded to demonstrate, in a long pantomime somewhere in between brag and combat kata, just how she would have beaten up the Dragon Lord and all his minions for good measure. Dashie's routine involved violent punches and kicks, delivered to the air or to nearby unfortunate trees, and ended when she became a bit over-enthusiastic and managed to entangle herself in a mess of lianas.

It might have been embarrassing in front of others, but with no witnesses other than themselves, they were both laughing, as Fluttershy helped her friend get loose, and they collapsed, still laughing, into a long hug.

"Well, that's how I would have done it 'cept for that last part," Dashie summarized, and Fluttershy smiled happily at her, for in truth Dashie already was her hero, and needed prove nothing to her.

Fluttershy's solutions, on the other hoof, tended to be softer ones. In the "Tale of Swiftwing Breeze and the Twister," for instance, when the eponymous hero and villain met, and Swiftwing stood before the anatomically-monstrous Twister, who boasted to him of being "the most mighty force of the Universe, alone in his magnificent glory," and set to him the Eight Impossible Tasks and the Ninth Hidden Quest, Dashie said that Swiftwing should have just kicked him, but Fluttershy disagreed.

"I think that The Twister was mostly just lonely," Fluttershy said. "He was mean and powerful, so everypony was scared of him. Maybe what he really wanted was a friend. Maybe if Swiftwing had been really nice to him, he and The Twister might have been friends, and then The Twister might have become nice too."

Rainbow Dash shook her head. "Things don't work like that," she said, a bit sadly. "Jerks are jerks. They aren't nice. You maybe don't get that 'cause you're real nice, Fluttershy -- the nicest Pony I've ever known." Her lovely cerise eyes shone at that. "Jerks are just ... jerks."

"Sometimes maybe jerks can be nice," Fluttershy argued. "Suppose everypony was always scared of you? They thought you were a jerk and they didn't want to be nice to you. Maybe you'd be a jerk, just to show them how mean you could be. But maybe inside you'd hope that somepony would be nice to you, be your friend, so you could be nice back."

"I wish things worked like that, 'Shy," Dashie said a bit sadly. "I wish more Ponies were nice. I don't like hanging around jerks. But I don't think it works that way. Jerks will be jerks, and they'll pick on nice Ponies, unless somepony shows them why they shouldn't be. Pow!" She mimed front-kicking a jerk. "That's how things are."

Fluttershy gave up on the argument. She didn't like arguing against Dashie, who was her best friend. But secretly, she still thought that The Twister had mostly just been lonely, and that the Tale of Swiftwing proved it.

After all, even though Swiftwing had been a really fast flier, The Twister could teleport. He could make banana mead rain from the clouds or make monsters from thin air. He could probably kill a Pony, real easily, if he wanted to do so.

But he hadn't killed Swiftwing. Instead he'd talked to him; offered him hospitality; set him tasks to do which, while difficult, weren't really impossible. Instead of fighting Swiftwing, he was sort of playing games with him. Extreme games, which could have killed Swiftwing, and might well have killed a normal Pony -- but then Swiftwing was no normal Pony. And The Twister, with his weird alien wisdom, might have known what Swiftwing could do.

And the deeds Swiftwing had done, because The Twister had told him to do it as the price of giving back Fairfeather Damson, had benefitted all Ponykind. If Swiftwing hadn't chained up the Skeleton Horde back in their cave, or slain the Fire Hydra, wouldn't a lot of other Ponies have gotten hurt? That didn't sound as if The Twister was really the Enemy of Ponykind, as so many stories claimed. It sounded more as if he was a secret friend, or wanted to be one.

Maybe he just needed a chance to be friends with Ponies.

Fluttershy resolved to herself that, if she ever met anyone like The Twister, she'd try to make friends with him.

As their childhood changed into adolescence, Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash continued to be best friends; continued to read and discuss and act out the old sagas. Gradually, their acting became more organized: Fluttershy wrote little playlets based loosely on the sagas and they would do whole scenes together.

Their favorite scenes would be dramatic ones in which involving a High Lady, played by Fluttershy, and her elite Bannermare, played by Rainbow Dash, faced various dangers side by side. Often the High Lady would call the Bannermare to her, and send the Bannermare on some perilous quest; sometimes the Bannermare would rescue the High Lady from danger; occasionally, they would experiment with declarations of romantic love (but usually in the context of the threatened or actual death of one or both of them, because otherwise, in Dashie's opinion, it would be "too mushy").

Fluttershy by this point understood Rainbow Dash well enough to know that Dashie's willingness to get even this mushy, even in the context of pretend games, was something she would have done only with somepony she wholly trusted, and she well appreciated the gift of that trust. In their little scenes they would have died for one another; they both knew, though for different reasons they were too shy to outright say it, that the same was true between them in real life.

They did other things together too, of course. They went on long walks and flights together, seeking out places of beauty and history and legend, and had many little adventures in the process. They joined the Junior Militia and made sure to get into the same squad: they camped out together on militia training and helped each other get through the rough parts. Dashie aided Fluttershy on the physical challenges, while Fluttershy cooked for them and tended Dashie's occasional injuries.

Those were good days. Wrapped in the pure and innocent fillyhood love of Rainbow Dash, Fluttershy was in part able to forget the warnings of her mother Sweetwing that the world was full of enemies; that the foes of Clan Wind and her scarcely-less malign kin of Windvane's part of Clan Wind plotted against her; that Buzzies lurked in the shadows always watching them; that Dragons were waiting for just the right moment to descend on them and eat them. These fears seemed meaningless in Dashie's aura of affection, in a world that contained a laughing boasting raspy voice and a rainbow mane and a lovely pair of cerise eyes.

There were still the bullies and the scoffers; the other Pegasi who laughed at her because she got scared sometimes and her wings locked up and she could barely fly when that happened; this was one reason why she very much preferred to stay near the ground. But Dashie was never mean to her about this, and who really cared what the others thought when Rainbow Dash, who Fluttershy considered the ideal Pegasus filly, so obviously approved of her?

Dashie had other Pegasus friends, and when they saw that she liked Fluttershy, they tolerated her for the sake of Dashie's friendship. Some of them even came to almost like her.

There was one Pegasus she especially disliked. Cloud Kicker, who was already a teenager, had always had some odd sort of fascination with her, and even as a pre-teen Fluttershy saw something wrong in the way those orchid-hued eyes stared at her; the way she sometimes fancied she saw someone or something else looking out at her, something predatory and cruel. Cloud Kicker already had a reputation for flying off with a lot of different colts -- and fillies -- and Dashie told her that Cloud just wanted to do some kind of mushy stuff to her.

"But she wants that with everypony, 'Shy," Rainbow Dash said. "She's nuts about it. Nothing special about it toward you -- which I guess is kind of icky in itself -- and she's mostly harmless. Just don't let her kiss you or anything, and you'll be okay."

Fluttershy wasn't so sure about that. She'd seen other Ponies look at her with lust before -- even at ten and eleven some Ponies thought she was beautiful, though Fluttershy didn't really agree with them -- and her extra sense could feel it. It wasn't a very nice feeling, but what that sense was picking up from Cloud Kicker when she leered at Fluttershy was somehow worse. It was like Cloud Kicker was one of the Dragons that Sweetwing always went on about, and she wanted to eat her.

She couldn't explain it to anypony, not even Rainbow Dash, and nopony would believe her. So she just stayed quiet, and tried to stay out of the way of Cloud Kicker.

Aside from Cloud Kicker, though, Fluttershy soon had little complaint regarding her treatment by the other Pegasi. The friendship of Rainbow Dash protected her from the bullies, who knew that they'd have to get through Dashie to get to Fluttershy; in a little while, the bullies found easier targets.

Besides, though Fluttershy did not fully realize it, she was growing into a fairly impressive young Pegasus mare herself. Her legs and neck and wings lengthened; her barrel curved; she began to unconsciously step high and deliberate when she walked. Cloud Kicker regarded her even more hungrily, and Fluttershy wasn't sure why, but Cloud Kicker was avoidable. Other Ponies -- mostly colts and stallions -- began to eye her admiringly, and though Fluttershy blushed and hid behind her own pink mane when this happened, it was sort of a good kind of embarrassment.

Fluttershy had been spending more and more time on the ground, exploring the White Tail Woods and the tame northern extension of the Everfree past Sweet Apple Acres into the outskirts of Ponyville; reveling in the diversity and beauty of the abundant surface life she found there. She made friends with many animals, and -- inevitably -- with a few Ponies.

She met three Earth Ponies, Big Mac and Applejack and Landscape Carrot, whom she sometimes ran into when she wandered on the northern edge of the Everfree. Big Mac was then in his late teens, a big red stallion, scary in terms of his size but sweet and shy and gentle when you got to know him. Fluttershy thought he was really nice, and sometimes wished she could work up the courage to really talk to him. She felt he was the kind of Pony who might be really worth knowing.

Applejack -- in her early teens -- was a small but well-muscled farm-filly: athletic and brave and rough and tough, and at first Fluttershy found her a little intimidating. Soon, though, Fluttershy saw that under that tough exterior, Applejack was one of the nicest and kindest girls she had ever met. AJ liked to boast, rather like Rainbow Dash, which was thus something that Fluttershy didn't mind at all.

Sometimes Rainbow Dash came with Fluttershy to visit Sweet Apple Acres, and inevitably, Dashie and Jackie wound up boasting at each other of their athletic prowess, which would often lead to impromptu competitons. When these happened, Fluttershy and Landscape would watch, keep score, and try to make sure nopony got seriously hurt.

Landscape Carrot was a quiet brown teenaged Earth Pony stallion Applejack's age, and Applejack's best friend: smart and a little shy and fascinated by geography and exploration. When he did talk, he often talked about the unexplored parts of Equestria, and the stories about what might be in there, and how much he wanted to go someday and find out himself.

Fluttershy liked Landscape. She thought he was at least as nice as Big Mac, in his own way, but she could see the way in which Applejack and Landscape looked adoringly at each other, especially when they thought nopony else was watching. Fluttershy could taste the love boiling off them at those moments -- and she knew better than to come between them.

It was not as if Fluttershy, as she was in her, was actually capable of setting her cap for anypony.

Oh, she had yearnings: originally-inchoate, and composed largely of pure admiration, but increasingly-romantic and sexual as she put on years and began to regularly Cycle. These centered mostly on her two best friends -- Rainbow Dash and Rarity Belle -- both of whom were female. When she learned enough to know the concept, she might have assumed she was lesbian, were it not for the fact that she had equally strong, perhaps stronger, fantasies regarding certain colts and younger stallions.

However, these yearnings had nothing, in her mind, to do with anything she might actually do, aside from the obvious ways in which she might relieve herself: with a wingtip or forehoof, later with an object Rarity gave her (given the limitations of hooves, Ponykind had long excelled in the crafting of such toys). This was because she would no more dream of approaching a colt (or filly, for that matter) romantically, let alone sexually than she would of voluntarily entering an air race.

This was not because she felt it immoral.

She did not exactly have normal morals.

Equestria, in the late 15th century YOH, was in a relatively prudish cycle of her civilization -- the Equestrians were more sexually-restrained than they had been a century agone, and (though Fluttershy then had no way of knowing this) more than they would be in a century to come. While, as always, the Pegasi were the least prudish of the Three Kinds (their sense of honor being more centered on athletics and war than on sex), they were also affected by this cultural trend.

Fluttershy, however, at the time had no real close contact with the culture as a whole. Her mother, Sweetwing, was far too concerned with improbable attacks by assassins, brigands, conspiracies and dragons, to teach her how to behave around colts, other than whispered admonitions to "beware of infiltrators!" Rainbow Dash, uninterested in "mushy stuff," was no fit tutor on the topic. Applejack and Landscape were too concerned with their own personal "mushy stuff," and Rarity ...

Rarity actually might have made a good tutor regarding such matters.

The problem was that Fluttershy lacked the fundamental education regarding flirtations and how to handle them that an ordinary filly would have gotten from her mother, her older sisters, her ordinary friends. Rarity instinctively understood things about affairs of the heart which Fluttershy was never to fully grasp, not in this incarnation of Kindness, and often chattered on happily about them to her friend.

Fluttershy listened to all this with a sort of bemused admiration, like somepony who had barely mastered fundamental algebra listening to a lecture on n-dimensional vector analysis. She was not greatly enlightened.

To Fluttershy it all seemed very theoretical and not at all applicable to her own life. She knew that she was an ugly, freakish thing: that something was fundamentally wrong with her body, that it did not properly fit the soul within her. She wasn't sure why, but it all sort of stemmed from that moment she fell out of the sky, and generated that very strange flight-field, the four-lobed one that would have worked better were she some creature with insectile, rather than avian wings.

Rainbow Dash and Rarity told her she was beautiful. Applejack and Landscape agreed, when they weren't just dreamily gazing at each other. When pressed (generally by Rarity) on the issue, even Big Mac responded to the question of Fluttershy's attractiveness with an "Eeyup!" -- though then he blushed right through his red coat and hid his face for the next few minutes.

She had met Rarity -- an off-white coated, violet-haired Unicorn filly the same age as Rainbow Dash, who was also a friend of Applejack's, though she spent most of her time in the town of Ponyville proper -- around the same time that she had met Applejack and the rest of the gang who hung out at Sweet Apple Acres. She was very much unlike Dashie or Jackie -- she fancied herself a refined lady, even as a little filly, and she managed to be one, most of the time. She was very much into hairstyles and pretty clothes and fashionable gatherings, or what she could find of them as a pre-teen filly.

They should not really have become good friends. Rarity was very outgoing and quite bold, for all her polite ways, and she was very good at inserting herself into whatever social group she wanted to join. Everypony noticed her, and inevitably admired the precocious filly.

Fluttershy was close to the opposite, when it came to other Ponies. She loved animals, and they loved her back, in part because she could talk to them, and most animals were fundamentally simple. If they knew that you meant them no harm, and were unafraid of them, they usually became friendly, or at least non-hostile. They just wanted to live: to eat and sleep and mate and enjoy whatever society was natural to them. Fluttershy could understand their motivations.

Ponies, now Ponies were complicated. They had all sorts of twisty goals and plans, and sometimes they didn't like you even if you were kind to them. What was worse, they could hide contempt and hostility from her -- all she would sense from that was that they didn't love or like her, but that was also what she got from Ponies who were indifferent toward her -- and then strike when her guard was down. Her friends weren't always around to protect her.

But Rarity -- Rarity understood other Ponies. She could talk to them like Fluttershy could to animals -- which is to say, she could say the right things to be respected by them, and she saw their motivations, even the twisty ones.

Fluttershy was in awe of Rarity's smoothness and social skills, just as she was in awe of Dashie's bravery and athletic feats. Rarity once explained to her that it was about sensing patterns, but Fluttershy couldn't understand any but the simplest part of that. Fluttershy knew, of course, that Ponies had patterns just like animals -- however, those patterns were far too complicated for Fluttershy to understand.

Sometimes, Fluttershy wished that Ponies had simpler patterns -- that a town of Ponies could all be like one big happy family, cooperating to do what needed to be done, never fighting, all just obeying their mayor and working together, sort of like a beehive. She didn't yet know about Leveling and Equalism, but she would have liked the ideas, had she encountered them as a child. Beehives and anthills made sense to her, in a way that Pony towns did not.

Rarity returned Fluttershy's fascination, though not for her abilities with animals. Rarity actually told Fluttershy, soon after they met: "I can see that you're special."

Fluttershy hadn't been sure what Rarity meant, so she wrapped her hair around her face and blushed and said in a small voice, "Not really."

"Oh, really you are," insisted Rarity. She was only eight at the time, but she was already very good at controlling a conversation. "I can tell by your voice and your manners that you're from one of the Old Clans."

Fluttershy was not even surprised that Rarity had picked up on this. In the months she had known her, Fluttershy had already realized that Rarity tended to pick up on everything about other Ponies, and they had spent hours at a time hanging out with each other.

"Sort of ..." Fluttershy admitted. "A little."

Rarity smiled at her. Her eyes were bright and her expression utterly friendly, practically-demanding more candid revelations.

"Well, um, I told you I'm Fluttershy Wind. Senior line. Kind of ... um ... very high."

Fluttershy winced as she said this, expecting her pretty friend to heap scorn upon her ridiculous claim. Though it was completely true, so laughing at her would have been unfair. Even at ten, she did not expect the world to be fair to her.

To her surprise, Rarity's eyes lit up and she nodded, as if a guess had been confirmed.

"Oho!" said Rarity. "I always saw something special about you! As if you were royal ... but I didn't know it was totally true!"

"Well sort of," Fluttershy explained. "See we don't have noble ranks. Only hono ... honorifics. I've got one." She felt utter horror when she realized just how far she'd stuck herself out then, and wished she could just shrink until her mane could completely conceal her.

"And yours would be?" Rarity asked.

"H... high Lady," Fluttershy breathed, her voice dying out on the last syllables.

"Eh?"

"High Lady," she whispered, a little louder.

Rarity frowned slightly, and wiped her ears with a purple silk kerchief.

"Fluttershy, can you say that just one more time?"

"High Lady!" Fluttershy almost screamed. Then she made a meeping noise and looked around frantically, fearing that somepony else had overheard.

Luckily, there was nopony else around.

"I see ..." Rarity stroked her chin with her kerchief. "High nobility or royalty, but no specified title." She lowered her head a moment, obviously mulling a bit more on it.

Then Rarity looked up. "Senior Wind line. Doesn't that mean that your family were the Command --"

"We're not any more!"

Fluttershy said that last part almost hysterically, something she noticed only after it was too late.

"Sorry," she said. "We ... um ... gave that claim up in the Unification ... long, long ago ... we mustn't let other Ponies think that about us any more. We're ... just normal Pegasi now." Or, in her own case, less than normal, as everypony must at least secretly realize. But one thing that Sweetwing Wind had impressed upon her was that Fluttershy shouldn't pretend to royalty, lest it be seen as an act of treason.

Then, she realized something truly scary. Far worse, to her youthful mind, than upsetting Celestia could ever be.

"Um ... please don't tell Rainbow Dash. Not that I'm High Clan, she knows that, but that I'm senior Wind. She might get mad at me cause I didn't tell her first."

"Say no more," Rarity reassured her. "Your secret is safe with me. From her ... and everypony."

And, because Fluttershy was still very naïve, she trusted Rarity completely.

And, because Rarity was a very good Pony, she never betrayed her friend.

Author's Note

I am of course referring to an Old Pegasus version of Joseph Campbell's Hero's Journey. There were of course Earth Pony and Unicorn versions of these tales.

Sweetwing Wind is Fluttershy's biological mother; the true identity of the sire is unknown to Fluttershy as of the time of this story (all she knows is that it was probably some male of the "Buzzies." Zephyr Breeze and his parents are actually Fluttershy's cousins, though they are the closest thing to a sane family structure she has ever known.

It is obvious that filly Fluttershy and filly Rainbow Dash, when they were learning the old tales, were falling in love. This was however not yet fully romantic, let alone sexual love. They were both extremely young and innocent at the time -- Fluttershy under 14 and Rainbow Dash under 12 -- around the age of the Cutie Mark Crusaders during their Season 1-4 adventures.

Cloud Kicker wants exactly what one would assume from reading the Winningverse, but in the main worldlines of the Shadow Wars Story Verse never got to Fluttershy before Rainbow Dash did, hence never seduced and damaged her, hence never fought with and partially-crippled Dashie, and also never added some of the power of Kindness to that of Winning-Through-Degradation, hence was unable to overcome and damage Pinkie Pie later, and further empower Winning with the might of Laughter -- instead, it is Cloud Kicker and her daemonic symbiote who are neutralized. On such small chances do great divergences sometimes turn.

Here, it is instead Nosey who takes advantage of Fluttershy. But Nosey's not hosting a Shadow Vice, and hence harms her only the more conventional sense of the word.

Flash Magnus is of course the Pillar of Harmony of the same name.

Swiftwing Breeze was a member of the Wind Clan, and thus distant kin of Fluttershy's.

Yes, The Twister was Discord.

It might seem odd to many modern Americans and Europeans that Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy were doing "junior militia training" together when they were in fact children -- both pre-teens, and Rainbow Dash actually pre-pubescent. However, the Pegasi had an old and storied military tradition, which had not entirely departed even after over a millennium of Equestrian unity.

In ancient sky-cities like Pegasopolis and High Derecho, the basic education of the young, starting at around 8-10 (when Dashie and Shy became close friends), was militia training, and in early days this not infrequently resulted in the deaths of some of the recruits. This was considered the price the Pegasi had to pay for being the most elite of elite warriors.

By the late 15th century YOH Equestrian Pegasi were of course far more peaceful and civilized, and much less willing to lose colts and fillies to death or crippling injury in militia training. Junior militia training was now more like childhood Scouting in America, and serious injuries had become rare.

Still, it was considered a character-building episode in the life of a young Pegasus, and the grounds of many lifelong friendships and loves were laid in the Junior Militia. Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash were quite normal in this regard.

Fluttershy instinctively yearns for a Hive, because of her heritage.

Rarity is being very forward, much more than she would be later on. But remember that she's still a child in this scene. Rarity has not yet developed her full social armament.

She's still got Fluttershy outgunned, though. But then Fluttershy is still a child too.

Rarity's speech patterns are more mature than one would expect of an eight-year-old filly because verbal communication is part of her meta-Talent of pattern recognition and development. This is also obvious in the adult Rarity, who is at least as verbally-skilled as is the polymath supergenius Twilight Sparkle.

Fluttershy knows the relevant history at ten years old because it's her family history. Rarity recognizes who the senior Wind line are because, being Rarity, even at eight she's started reading peerage books for pleasure. Where her own personal interests are concerned, Rarity is as almost as much the intellectual as is Twilight Sparkle.